


That's A Good Look For You

by thecryoftheseagulls



Series: Zeryn Brosca [4]
Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: F/M, Post-return to Ostagar, mildly angsty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-27
Updated: 2015-07-27
Packaged: 2018-04-11 15:08:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4440587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecryoftheseagulls/pseuds/thecryoftheseagulls
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It seemed important to eventually address any feelings Alistair might have on the fact that Zeryn named her Mabari after his dead brother, so here we are.</p>
            </blockquote>





	That's A Good Look For You

The wind howls bitterly through the wasteland that Ostagar has become, and Zeryn is always cold, up here on the surface where the air just bites right through her, but it’s worse here, worse with the snow and the stench of death, even death weeks old. She packs Cailan’s armor carefully in with her bedroll and slings it all on her back, but his shield she takes, leaving hers half buried in the ground to mark the site of his pyre. 

It’s a tense, quiet journey to the main camp, about a day north of the ruins, and they only make it a couple of hours before the sun sets and they have to stop for the night. Morrigan radiates her disapproval of the extravagance of the whole endeavor, and Zevran’s chatter can’t quite dispel the mood. Zeryn doesn’t know what Alistair is thinking, can’t read it on his face or see it in his eyes, and he is unusually silent. 

She pulls out the armor again by the light of the fire while Morrigan retreats to the shadows and Zevran takes first watch. It’s discolored from too much time on the filthy bodies of darkspawn, covered in grime and blood, but she remembers how it looked before when Cailan wore it. Everything about that man had been golden, from the gleam of his armor to the color of his hair and the timbre of his laugh. A King out of the stories Rica liked to tell her as a child, he was, and he’d looked at her when she said she wasn’t anything, and called her ‘special’. 

Zeryn blinks back tears and sets to scrubbing the armor clean. All that faith in the Wardens. What had it gotten him, anyways? Nothing but death. She was nothing more than a duster, even if the fate of the whole stone-damned surface rested on her shoulders. She wasn’t special. And maybe he’d been special, once, glorious human king that he was, but he’d ended up just as dead as the rest of these sorry bastards. So much for his big ideas. 

She scrubs till the armor gleams and her fingers threaten to split open from the cold, scrubs through Zevran’s watch and her watch and into Morrigan’s watch, and finally falls asleep slumped over the pauldrons of Ferelden’s last King. 

When she wakes, bleary-eyed, Alistair’s cloak is wrapped around her shoulders and the eastern skyline is just turning grey. She stands, scratches Cailan’s head where he’s curled up against her side, and looks around for Alistair. 

He’s a few feet into the trees and has Cailan’s breastplate in his hands, holding it up to his chest thoughtfully with his back to the camp. Here, in the dim light of morning, shadows behind his head that could just as well be longer hair if you don’t look too closely, the resemblance to his brother is startling. Zeryn sucks in a breath, and realizes she’d never noticed it before. 

“Zeryn!” He starts, clutching the breastplate closer to his chest guiltily. “I, ah, I didn’t hear you get up.”

Zeryn pulls his cloak closer and wraps her arms around herself, loathe to give it up because that would probably make him put the armor down. 

“That’s a good look for you,” she says softly, her voice heavy with sleep. 

Alistair cocks his head, like he thinks she’s making fun, and he looks down self-consciously. “I just wanted to look at it.”

Zeryn pads forward and runs her fingers around the edges of the plate, pushing it up to more of the position it would be if he were to actually put it on.

“I think it would fit you,” she says. 

“Do you think?” He bites his lip. “Eamon would like that. Maric’s bastard son in the armor of the king. Heh.” 

“You look like him. Cailan, I mean.”

Alistair’s eyes are on her face quickly, and there’s a weight there she hasn’t seen before, an intensity. His voice, when he speaks again, is low, humorless. 

“Is that why you want me? Because I look like him?”

“What?” Zeryn drops her hand from the armor, where it wasn’t quite touching him, but wasn’t quite not, either. She stares.

Alistair looks down, where Cailan has sat down and pressed himself against Zeryn’s side to watch this conversation intently. 

“You named your Mabari after my dead half-brother, Zeryn,” he says helplessly. 

“So?”

“So? So it’s - it’s weird, okay? All those darkspawn yesterday? You didn’t just kill them, Zeryn, you _slaughtered_ them after you saw what they did to Cailan. And now you’re - you’re looking at me like that because I’m holding his armor, and I don’t know if you’re actually seeing me, or just seeing him, and I don’t know what you want from me, because I’m not him, Zeryn!” His voice rises. “I’m not. I’m not the King. I don’t want to be the King. I’m just…” he sighs, and his voice goes quiet again. “I just want to be Alistair.” 

Zeryn’s hand goes to her mouth, and Alistair studies the ground, his fingers tightening around the breastplate. 

“I didn’t know he was your brother when I named Cailan,” she says, after a long time of silence. 

“I know,” he mumbles. 

“He was kind to me. Nobody had been kind to me like that before, ‘cept Rica. Even Duncan just wanted me for something. And I wish…I wish it hadn’t ended like that, not for him.” Alistair nods without raising his eyes, and Zeryn watches him for a moment before she continues, “But I never wanted him, Alistair. He never made me laugh, or watched the stars with me, or guarded my back in battle, or woke me up when the nightmares got too bad. He was just an idea, see? That a duster like me maybe could finally be something up here. You’re…” She swallows around the lump in her throat. “You’re the one I want to make that come true with.”

Zeryn’s the one who looks away, this time, and the moment stretches until Alistair’s voice, cracking, says, “I think I’d like to kiss you now.”

Rubbing the back of her hand across her eyes, she mutters, “About damn time,” and Alistair laughs, and drops the breastplate to the ground with a thunk, his big hands curling around her waist. She leans forward on her tiptoes and he bends down and presses his lips to hers, soft, quick, but so gentle. 

“And fuck Eamon,” Zeryn says, burying her face in his chest. “You don’t have to be king if you don’t wanna be king.” 

Alistair chuckles, his breath warm against her hair, “You are a light in all this darkness, my dear,” he whispers. 

Zeryn wraps her arms around his chest. “But you should still wear the armor. If you want to. It’s pretty.”

“You think?”

“Mm-hmm.”

**Author's Note:**

> As always, you can find me on tumblr at [thecryoftheseagulls](http://thecryoftheseagulls.tumblr.com)


End file.
